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Iran Threatens Retaliation Against Israel Over Syria StrikePA Cleric: Hamas Wants Gazans to Die for "Good Headlines"Iran Says It Could Enrich Uranium to 20% Within Two DaysIsrael to Inaugurate Its First Regulation-Size Racetrack for Racing and Technology

Iran Threatens Retaliation Against Israel Over Syria Strike

Referring to an airstrike in Syria attributed to Israel, which killed at least seven Iranian military personnel, a top adviser to Iran's Supreme Leader has said that "the crimes will not remain unanswered," Iran's official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported Tuesday.

Ali Akbar Velayati, a foreign policy adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, made the comments at the start of a two-day visit to Syria. He also said that unspecified enemies would soon be expelled from Syria.

Velayati, who is also chairman of the Islamic Awakening Assembly, also expressed pleasure at what were described as recent victories of the Syrian army and its allies, especially in the Damascus suburb of Eastern Goutha. He said that the "outrage" was especially felt by the United States and "the Zionist regime of Israel."

He dismissed charges that the Syrian army used chemical weapons, despite images showing victims with telltale signs of such an attack, as "baseless accusations" spurred by frustration.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif similarly dismissed charges of a chemical weapons attack by Syrian forces on Saturday against a rebel stronghold as claims made by the U.S. and Israel to "boost the morale of terrorists."

Originally Iran claimed that four the fourteen reported killed in the airstrike against the Tiyas airbase in Syria had been military personnel, including one colonel. It has since raised the number of military personnel killed to seven.

Syria, which is Iran's client, also warned of "dangerous repercussions” to the airstrike, which it attributed to Israel.

PA Cleric: Hamas Wants Gazans to Die for "Good Headlines"

The Islamist terror group Hamas, which is in complete political and military control of the Gaza Strip, “is sending Gazans to their death for good headlines,” a senior adviser to Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas charged, The Times of Israel reported.

Referring to the current round of Hamas-orchestrated riots along the Gaza-Israel border, in which some 30 Palestinians have been killed, Mahmoud al-Habbash — the PA’s top cleric and Abbas’s adviser on religious and Islamic affairs — dismissed Hamas’s “emotional stories of heroism.”

Instead, the cleric said that Hamas was deliberately using Gazans as human shields, a war crime under international law, for political gains. It is a tactic that Hamas has admitted to using in the past.

Hamas was “selling illusions,” he said in a sermon on Friday, adding that the terror group was “trading in suffering and blood, trading in victims” so that it could make strong declarations on TV. “These [Hamas] acts of ‘heroism’ don’t fool anyone anymore,” he said. “The Palestinian people…sides with the PLO.”

Hamas has been in complete control of the Gaza Strip since 2007, after violently expelling members of Fatah from the enclave, which culminated in Hamas's seizure of all military and governmental institutions.

Hamas has failed to deliver on its promises for a better future for the citizens of Gaza. Despite Israel sending tons of goods into the Strip on a daily basis – food, medicine, building material among other things – the population of Gaza is suffering extreme hardship.

Hamas is under increasing financial strain. The Palestinian Authority is threatening to withhold payments to Gaza, and there are consistent reports that international sponsors are cutting back as well. The terror group has diverted international assistance to military purposes, including tunnels, while neglecting civilian infrastructure.

Iran Says It Could Enrich Uranium to 20% Within Two Days

On the occasion of its National Nuclear Day, Iran boasted that it could enrich uranium to 20% in just two days’ time, if the United States would withdraw from the deal, the Associated Press reported Monday. The threat is an indication that the 2015 nuclear deal left much of the Islamic Republic's nuclear infrastructure intact.

The boast, which came from Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) spokesman, Behrouz Kamalvandi, was consistent with other claims from Iranian officials. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said that in the absence of a deal, the United States "will see its impact within a week or less than a week."

The boasts that Iran would quickly return to an accelerated nuclear weapons program in the absence of the deal are consistent with claims made by other Iranian officials, and that the nuclear deal left much of Iran's nuclear infrastructure untouched.

Last week, Iran experts, Reuel Marc Gerecht and Ray Takeyh, wrote in The Washington Post that Iran is exploiting the deal to modernize its nuclear infrastructure with advanced centrifuges in ways that would make detection of its nuclear weapons work much more challenging.

The deal satisfied two conditions that Iran needed to advance its nuclear weapons work: it lifted sanctions and it is also "permissive enough to allow the development of these machines."

The nuclear deal, Gerecht and Takeyh wrote, gives Iran "at least eight years to fully develop a new generation of centrifuges," to replace the thousands of first generation centrifuges it currently has installed.

Israel to Inaugurate Its First Regulation-Size Racetrack for Racing and Technology

Fifteen years ago, when future Israeli NASCAR driver Alon Day first started training for his successful career in motorsports, he had to use simulators and travel often to Europe because there was no regulation-size track in Israel.

That situation is about to be remedied with the May 22 opening of Motor City, Israel’s first auto racetrack, in Hatzerim near Beersheva in the Negev.

“It’s such a big thing for me and for every motorsport athlete in Israel because we all started when there was absolutely no place to practice here – it was like a desert,” Day tells ISRAEL21c. “And yet in the desert we managed to build this track.”

The first phase of Motor City is an Italian-designed 2.1-kilometer track that meets FIA (Federation Internationale de l’Automobile) standards for racecars up to Formula 3. It may later be expanded to 4.5 kilometers in order to meet Formula 1 standards.

Day, 26, is working with Motor City business development VP Ohad Boaz to open a racing school on the premises “so young drivers who want to develop themselves won’t have to go to Europe like I did,” he told ISRAEL21c before heading back there to defend his NASCAR Whelan Euro Series championship title, which he clinched last October.

Within the next year or so, Boaz expects the not-yet-completed site to become a hub for Israeli smart-mobility and automotive technology R&D; an auto showroom and sales center; and an all-weather training and testing ground for European motorsport teams and carmakers.